Evaly asked to submit details about money stuck at gateways within 11 Dec

The Ministry of Commerce has sought detailed information from Evaly, an e-commerce platform, about the amount of money stuck at the payment gateways as well as a list of affected customers within 11 December.

The e-commerce cell at the commerce ministry sent a letter to Evaly Chairman Shamima Nasrin last week, Mohammad Syed Ali, deputy secretary of commerce ministry confirmed the matter to The Business Standard.

Co-founder Shamima Nasrin took back the helm of the collapsed Ponzi scheme-like e-commerce platform Evaly in September after having secured a bail.

In a virtual press conference, she promised to clear all its liabilities to hundreds of thousands of customers and merchants from fresh business and investments.

According to a special audit report, Evaly now has products worth Tk25 crore in its warehouse and around Tk28 crore stuck in online payment gateways.

Evaly, under the new board having Shamima Nasrin as the chairman and two of her family members, two representatives of the ministry of commerce and the ecommerce association of Bangladesh, is showing hopes for the revival through a compliant business model – no loss-bearing discounts and no advance from customers. 

Shamima urged 45 lakh Evaly customers and 30,000 merchants to onboard for regular buying and selling on the platform as soon as it resumes operations either through recovering the old server password or having a new server.

Following an August 2020 media report on Evaly's business model and practices to default in time delivery, the Bangladesh Bank froze Evaly and its founders' bank accounts, a commerce ministry-formed committee investigated Evaly affairs.

Customers and sellers who went cautious came back to Evaly with a bigger exposure as they saw that no authorities had stopped Evaly's business.

In 2020, Evaly was claiming to have acquired 30 lakh customers and it took less than six months to raise the number to 70 lakh after the reappearance in weeks.

Subsidised SME deals, designed for the small businesses to source their merchandise from Evaly at a much cheaper rate, entrapped thousands who paid Evaly in February-March this year and are yet to get any product or refund.

Aspiring middle-class youths rushed for the Evaly discounts on their dream motorcycles, families ordered home-appliances and electronics to match their needs and ability.

Evaly got the largest leg of its growth after bypassing the August 2020 government crackdown for investigation.

The commerce ministry took an additional year to finalise its Standard Operating Procedure for the e-commerce industry which stopped taking advances from customers against the long cycle delivery of products and also to introduce an escrow system in electronic payment gateways which ensures after delivery fund transfer to the Evaly-like e-commerce platforms.